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Screen Time Might Be Physically Changing Kids' Brains 56

Posted by BeauHD from the caution-is-warranted dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: A study published today in JAMA Pediatrics warns that kids' literacy and language skills suffer with screen use, and MRI scans of their brains appear to back up the findings. Forty-seven 3- to 5-year-olds took a test to measure their cognitive abilities, and their parents were asked to answer a detailed survey about screen time habits. Questions included: How frequently do they use that screen? What type of content are they viewing? And is there an adult sitting with the child talking about what they're watching? The answers were scored against a set of screen time guidelines put out by the American Academy of Pediatrics. The kids also had their brains scanned in an MRI machine.

The scans revealed that kids who spent more time in front of screens had what the authors call lower "white matter integrity." White matter can be roughly thought of as the brain's internal communications network -- its long nerve fibers are sheathed in fatty insulation that allows electrical signals to move from one area of the brain to another without interruption. The integrity of that structure -- how well organized the nerve fibers are, and how well developed the myelin sheath is -- is associated with cognitive function, and it develops as kids learn language. Lead author John Hutton of Cincinnati Children's Hospital told MIT Technology Review there's a clear link between higher screen use and lower white matter integrity in the children his team studied. That structural change appears to be reflected in the results of the cognitive test the kids took as well, which showed high screen time associated with lower levels of language and literacy skills. Signe Lauren Bray, a researcher at the University of Calgary who was not involved in the study, downplays the findings by pointing out that it's a small and preliminary study. "It's absolutely not clear that screen time causes differences in brain development and there are many factors that could explain the association found here," she says.

Regardless, "Caution is warranted," Hutton says. "Children are not small grown-ups, and their needs change with development."
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Screen Time Might Be Physically Changing Kids' Brains More

Screen Time Might Be Physically Changing Kids' Brains

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  • Good movie about this.
    https://www.screenagersmovie.c... [screenagersmovie.com]

    https://www.screenagersmovie.c... [screenagersmovie.com]

  • Let my 2nd kid have a crap ton of screen time since the time they could hold a tablet/phone. By age 4 he was playing madden on my xbox. He had taught himself all the numbers from 0-99, memorized probably half the starters in the NFL, their number, and their position. And when I asked him, I see your Seahawks (NFL Football Team) are beating the Cowboys 21-7.. How many points do they need to score? He responded 14 points daddy, 2 touch downs with PATs.. At 4 years old.. By 1st grade he had taught himself h
    • Since so much seems to be against your expectation, are you sure you're the father?

      In a more serious note, if you had gone a different path with your son, he might have exceeded your expectations differently. Or turned out like his sister, who clearly is yours, judging from your words...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bengie ( 1121981 )
      The smartest people tend to self teach and can learn from almost anything. It is interesting that one of the highest scoring countries, top 5 across the board and number 1 in several areas, has no assigned homework, doesn't even test their students until about the age of 16, and mostly just let kids be kids while giving them the opportunity to pursue learning. All of their classes are elective with no real requirements. The kids could just play around all day if they wanted. Imagine brilliant.org and curiou

  • Duh. It's called neurplasticity. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shanen ( 462549 ) on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @04:34PM (#59388566) Homepage Journal

    Everything changes kids' brains. Adults, too.

    Having said that, here's the fMRI research I'm interesting in seeing: Where do people store memories of what they read?

    In particular, I suspect that speed readers store a lot of what they read in the visual cortex (with a more associative organization), while readers who vocalize probably store the material in other parts of the brain (with more linear structures). It would also be interesting to compare with readers of ideographic languages (Chinese) and hybrid languages (Japanese) to see how they store and remember books. Webpages and minor stuff would be harder to track, but it should be relatively easy to do fMRIs while talking to people about entire books that they've read.

    So far I haven't managed to find or stumble across any such research, though it seems pretty straightforward... Anyone have any hot leads to share?

    • Gosh, I hate typos.

      If Slashdot only had a financial model that allowed me to nudge in that direction, then allowing for the correction of such slips would be the project most likely to get my small amount of financial nudging. But maybe enough people would agree to make it happen?

      And yes, I do Preview. Carefully. Usually two or three times. But the Subject: lines are too easy to overlook. Of course I thought I knew what the subject was.

      • Gosh, I hate typos.

        If Slashdot only had a financial model that allowed me to nudge in that direction, then allowing for the correction of such slips would be the project most likely to get my small amount of financial nudging. But maybe enough people would agree to make it happen?

        And yes, I do Preview. Carefully. Usually two or three times. But the Subject: lines are too easy to overlook. Of course I thought I knew what the subject was.

        If they allowed people to edit posts the integrity of conversations and more importantly arguments would be completely lost.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          If they allowed people to edit posts the integrity of conversations and more importantly arguments would be completely lost.

          Off topic, but... Not sure there's that much continuity to protect these days, but let me clarify that I'm not advocating for unlimited editing. However I'm not sure of the best solution approach. There are three basic options.

          1. Allow deletion (So a corrected version could be reposted.)
          2. Correction for some short period (Seems to work well in practice, though I haven't seen the nudge version I'd like.)
          3. Editing with a history function. (Some implementations work well.)

          I hope we get returned to the neurop

          • If they allowed people to edit posts the integrity of conversations and more importantly arguments would be completely lost.

            Off topic, but... Not sure there's that much continuity to protect these days, but let me clarify that I'm not advocating for unlimited editing. However I'm not sure of the best solution approach. There are three basic options.

            1. Allow deletion (So a corrected version could be reposted.)
            2. Correction for some short period (Seems to work well in practice, though I haven't seen the nudge version I'd like.)
            3. Editing with a history function. (Some implementations work well.)

            I hope we get returned to the neuroplasticity discussion now...

            Maybe something along the lines of the effects of repeatedly playing computer games? Recently returned to a Linux game (Backbone) I hadn't played in some years and was surprised how quickly the old circuits were reactivated. I certainly feel the evidence of my brain having been changed...

            The only direct applications of neuroplasticity that i am familiar with are those involving traumatic brain injury(TBI) and more specifically rehabilitation after a TBI.

            Kids brains are WAY more "plastic" and their outcomes are far greater that those of adults.

            • Oh good , a typo :/

              also :

              1. Allow deletion (So a corrected version could be reposted.)

              Could still alter integrity.

              2. Correction for some short period (Seems to work well in practice, though I haven't seen the nudge version I'd like.)

              Still alter integrity...

              3. Editing with a history function. (Some implementations work well.)

              Maybe

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      Duh. It's called neuroplasticity. Everything changes kids' brains. Adults, too.

      I don't think the research warrants a "duh". The research says that screen-time is associated with (1) changes in brain structure, (2) decreased language and literacy skills. You might have reasonably expected screen-time to increase language skills e.g. if the children are exposed to vastly more words spoken by characters on TV than they would be if left playing more on their own.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shanen ( 462549 )

        You're right as regards the substance of the research. My "Duh" was mostly in response to the headline, but even Slashdot seems to be suffering from clickbait fever these years.

        The body of my post is focused on the question of memory, which is related and interests me more than the focus of the reported research. I remember (or have conflated memories of) times when helpful people on Slashdot would pop up with the latest research on such topics. I feel like I'm lagging farther and farther behind these days

        • Your memories are correct, there used to be a plethora of smart people in various fields frequenting this site, and you could count on getting a ton of additional info from the comments no matter how poor the summary was. Now you might get one or two informative and topical comments, but you might get none at all (see most posts on astrophysics). I wish I knew where the old crowd migrated to, or where their successors hang out, because I feel like I'm a post-apocalyptic survivor returning to the same crumbl

          • Well, I wish I had a nice mod point for you, but I think it would be on the "We agree" dimension, which shouldn't count for much...

            However, your UID raises a timing question. My own usage of Slashdot had a long break, but I was able to keep my identity. Perhaps you rejoined with a fresh ID at some point? Or did the transition start later than I thought, perhaps during my absence? (At this late date I only have a vague memory of getting disgusted with Slashdot at some point, but it might have been a minor in

            • I lost access to my original circa 1999 account at some point after college, but at some point found some interest to come back. I would say that the heyday of the site was certainly early 2000s, but it wasn't bad even 10 years ago.

    • while readers who vocalize probably store the material in other parts of the brain (with more linear structures)

      This one is interesting. I remember reading of an experiment done on a patient undergoing brain surgery. The patient was awake because no anesthesia is needed since there are no pain receptors in the brain. When they stimulated a certain section of his brain, he reported hearing music. When they stopped stimulating it, the music stopped. But when they stimulated it again, he heard the music

  • There's been articles on this as long as I've been alive.

    "TV ROTS YOUR BRAIN" has always been an shibboleth - just as it was with radio before it. Plenty of very serious studies with limited results and big conclusions tied to them.

    Yes - the brains of the young are different from being given different inputs. Some difference in focus, when you average across a lot.

    But the Flynn Effect has also been working all this time. That is, every generation has more or less been 5% improved on just about any more-o

    • It's a study of only 47 children and isn't a controlled experiment, so it's hard to even make a strong claim for a causal relationship. There's all manner of other hypotheses (an easy one is that "dull" children will be more interested in screens) that could explain this result. For all we know the real cause is something else entirely that's resulting in parents who give their children more screen time, but we're not measuring that directly so we get a false impression that screen time is the cause of the

      • A friend of mine that teaches elementary school wanted to do a research paper on reading skills for those kids that had a family computer vs those that don't back before smart phones. He had noticed that the kids who had a family computer did better in his classes

        At the time I told him the results would be skewed because those with a family computer where more financially secure and often had a stay at home parent. He came back to me a few months later, after parent teacher conferences and confirmed that wa

        • Freakonomics did a review of what affects school performance. Here is roughly what they found:

          Things that don't matter much: What parents do.

          Things that matter very much: Who parents are.

          If your mom reads to you every day, that doesn't help much.

          If your mom has an IQ of 130 and a high income, the kid will likely do well.

          The economist's guide to parenting [freakonomics.com]

          • If your mom reads to you every day, that doesn't help much.

            Of course it doesn't.... If she teaches you to read and do math then it helps.

            • If she teaches you to read and do math then it helps.

              Far less than you think. Smart kids will pick up the skills anyway. Dumb kids will fall behind no matter what their parents do.

              DNA is not destiny: Pre-natal nutrition is also important.

            • What if she makes you read to her instead?

      • Here's the thing though - none of this might actually be *bad* for a kid!

        Honestly - at least when I was a kid, I was a complete sponge for input. That's what that intense feeling of 'boring' feeds from - it's kind of painful to be stuck in place with less info that you could be drawing from.

        And you know what - waiting for other people to make decisions on everything is crazy slow. I know I was drawn to fast paced information sources - like computers and BBSs of the day, just because I could have a larger

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

        I've read other studies with better designs that have looked at learning and reading comprehension on screens as opposed to other forms of media like books or print outs that have found worse results from screens, though the reason for the effect is not well understood

        Presumably that "not well understood" is precisely the importance of this study. It's telling future researches that a fruitful place to investigate - for a plausible mechanism behind the effect you mention - is the myelination and micro-organization of white matter.

    • "TV ROTS YOUR BRAIN" has always been an shibboleth - just as it was with radio before it. Plenty of very serious studies with limited results and big conclusions tied to them."

      At one time, BOOKS were the thing that was rotting people's brains and detrimental to society. and I am not talking about comic books, but ordinary text only books.

      These "$CURRENT_POPULAR_MEDIA is bad for you" buffoons were always full of shit, and they are just spouting because they want to feel important and they love hearin

  • Doesn't EVERYTHING... (Score:3)

    by Jhon ( 241832 ) on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @04:39PM (#59388586) Homepage Journal

    physically change kids brains? It's that one of the main parts about "growing up" and brain devolopment?

  • The question is not whether it changes the brain but how it changes the brain. And not "what current skills are we losing" but instead what new skills we are gaining.

    How many of you know how to knap flint, obsidian or chert into stone tools? How to recognize edible plants? How to ride a horse? How to use a sword?

    The skills of yesterday fade away as we use our brains to learn new things, things more relevant to the modern world.

    Of course extensive use of new tools will develop new skills. Of course it w

    • I had similar complaints about being a "wool-gatherer" who read books too much 50+ years ago. Probably did change my brain, now I'm making 3X what they did scaled for inflation.

    • I grew up in the mid-west, so I know how to do most of those things and much more. I seriously doubt I would if I had lived in a large city. The farmers and ranchers still have and teach those skills to their kids and they aren't going away anytime soon because the modern world still needs to eat.

    • Skills are one thing, but what about the fact that nothing has physical buttons anymore? I have to wonder if some tactile-connected brain regions are atrophying since everything feels the same -- except for a remote control, mouse, and keyboard -- when anyone interacts with media nowadays.

      • Yes, kids today will never know the experience of unwinding audio tape that got itself wrapped around the capstan and/or the pinch roller, and taking care (and praying) that they don't ruin that Metallica cassette tape that they spent half their week's allowance on. No wonder their minds are rotting.

  • Good or bad? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tttonyyy ( 726776 )

    Any mentally engaging activity is likely to change brain structure given enough time, but whether that change is beneficial or detrimental seems to remain a mystery.

    If your child was obsessed with making stuff with Lego no doubt there would be a discernible change there too. An inclination towards engineering, who knows?

    But, we perceive screen time as bad and therefore interpret any brain adaptation as bad too, but perhaps there is some later life benefit?

    (Personally I doubt it, I think screen time is a th

    • The issue with screen time is that it basically causes small children to shut down and do nothing except stare at the screen. All interaction with others stops, they become entirely passive. This is not something that has happened for the many thousands of years over which we evolved, and for this reason is likely to be a bad thing. The modern era has many things for which we are poorly adapted for, like cars, never-ending and constant supply of food, jobs which involve sitting all day, etc. Hence the curs

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      Any mentally engaging activity is likely to change brain structure given enough time, but whether that change is beneficial or detrimental seems to remain a mystery.

      A mystery? The research specifically says that it's associated with a decrease in literacy and language ability. That seems like a straightforward detriment.

  • That is essentially the claim here. Sounds like ye old moral panic in full swing.

  • They should go back to wholesome and healthy gang banging, tagging, and shoplifting. Ever since gaming and computer use skyrocketed around 1995 or so, teens have been spending more time in front of those screens instead of doing the aforementioned activities, and things have really gone down hill since then.

  • It's entirely possible that screen time isn't the cause of the white matter degradation. It sounds more like the lack of communication and use of language (tapping bubble in a game doesn't use any language whatsoever) is more likely the culprit.

    Basically, the problem isn't screen time. It's the fact no-one talks to each other any more.
  • Oh great, another excuse for why people can't try hard and do their best :|

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